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July 26

RAINBOW: Owners of electric vehicles scheduling excursions away from home can now include Harbick’s Country Store in the plans, thanks to a newly installed electric charging station.

The apparatus was part of a $2 million agreement between the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Oregon Department of Transportation that calls for the installation of 20 new electric vehicle (EV) DC fast charging stations as an extension of the three state network that comprises the West Coast Electric Highway system.

In an announcement a year ago, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that Northwest Oregon said, “These new electric vehicle charging stations will help us meet President Obama’s goal of reducing our reliance on fossil fuels,” adding that, “They will also help us protect Oregon’s environment by reducing emissions.”

Escapes from Oregon’s state prisons are very rare events today, and have been for years. But there was a time, not that long ago, when an average of one prisoner every month made a break for freedom, and one or two of them actually succeeded in staying gone for a good long time.

From safecracker to war hero

The criminal population in Oregon’s prisons has changed in several ways in the past 100 years, and one of the most noticeable ways is the type of criminal housed there. In 1912, there were a lot more of a particular sort of criminal professional who specialized in breaking into vaults — safecrackers, or in the terminology of the time, “yeggs.” Possibly because they made a living solving puzzles of this sort, yeggs seemed to make up a disproportionately high percentage of escapees.